(Begin highlight one) “Students are neither catechized on the Commandments nor taught to adopt them,” (end highlight one) the judges wrote. “Nor are teachers commanded to proselytize students who ask about the displays or contradict students who disagree with them.” In a dissenting opinion, Judge Leslie H. Southwick insisted that “S.B. 10 is facially unconstitutional under the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses.” Southwick was joined by judges Priscilla Richman, James E. Graves Jr., Stephen A. Higginson, Dana M. Douglas and Irma Carrillo Ramirez in the dissent. Those who have supported SB 10 say the Ten Commandments are a historical document. Attorney General Ken Paxton called the appeals court’s ruling “a major victory for Texas and our moral values.” “The Ten Commandments have had a profound impact on our nation, and (begin highlight two) it’s important that students learn from them every single day,” (end highlight two) he wrote in a post online Tuesday evening.

I do think we have a seriousness problem in the judiciary

www.statesman.com/news/educati...

There are people in Texas who were denied representation by Republicans, and the people of Virginia came to their aid.

It's sad that someone even needs to say this

Issac Chotiner: You say you "love dinosaurs" but, when asked, you identify your favorite dinosaur as T-Rex, the one dinosaur anyone over the age of 2 recognizes. Do I have that right?

Me: No, Issac, listen,

With the heaviest of hearts, today we mourn the passing of Sudanese writer, thinker, and advocate Muzan Alneel. Muzan, who served in our 2021-2022 nonresident fellow cohort, leaves behind an incredible legacy of policy ideas and impact that consistently centered the Sudanese people.

بقلوب مثقلة بالحزن، ننعى اليوم رحيل الكاتبة والمفكرة والمناصرة السودانية مزن النيل. تترك مزن، التي زاملت معهد التحرير عام 2021-2022، إرثًا استثنائيًا من الرؤى والطروحات السياساتية التي طالما انتصرت لمصالح وطموحات الشعب السوداني.

I have been working on a conceptual horror script where I am stalked through the streets by that headline

alex norris predicted more or less exactly this

🙃🙃🙃

www.liberalcurrents.com/the-moral-ar...

The Moral Arc of the Universe Bends Toward Finding Out Chaos has a nasty habit of rebounding homewards.

This @liberalcurrents.com headline made me laugh way too hard. Good piece too.

www.liberalcurrents.com/the-moral-ar...

*Footnote. I have described bluesky previously as a network of people who took a moral stand not to be on another social media platform. The promise and the peril of this place comes from a concentration of people who tend to take moral stands.

They think that through will alone they can overcome the problems of power and do everything they want at little cost. It is worth pointing out the futility of this and pulling back the veil for people who might confuse solipsism for strategy. That's what I'm trying to do with this piece. 7/7

We are not in the "weirdly balanced" world of OOTS (which takes place in a world that follows and satirizes D&D 3.5 ed rules). But we live in a world where to gain and use power you have to make sacrifices. You have to choose between priorities. The current regime does not believe in this 6/

Xykon the lich searches for Varsuvius the wizard in OOTS #657 while saying the following: "I used to think spells equaled power, too, back when I was alive. I've learned a lot since then. You know what does equal power? Power. Power equals power. Crazy, huh? But the type of power? Doesn't matter as much as you'd think. It turns out, everything is oddly balanced. Weird, but true. For example: right now, power takes the form of a + 8 racial bonus to listen skill checks. [He grabs V and starts choking them]. So, Uncle Xykon, what's the moral of the story? A big pile of spells isn't enough when the other guy has a big pile of spells and the strength to crush your windpipe with his bear phalanges. And they died happily ever after. The End."

A thing that I always think about is a piece of dialogue in the long-standing D&D webcomic Order of the Stick. A wizard has challenged the lich Xykon using borrowed power and lost, and Xykon monologues at them as they hide in invisibility. The line "power equals power" stands out to me from this 5/

I also think we need to point out that he's not getting results. And that in fact he's not going to be able to get the results he is promising with the methods that he is using. Because while the people around trump talk about power all the time, it's clear that they don't think about power 4/

At the same time, I think that a lot of the appeal of Trump's style of politics to people who don't share all of his views is that even if he doesn't act morally, he is able to get results. So while I think it's important to point out the ways that he and his advisors are horrific people... 3/

I see the need for this kind of argument as coming from two different places. I think that liberals (especially those on bluesky*) in the trump era have become understandably focused on personal and national morality, specifically how to restore it 2/

Now that I can take a breath again, let me give a little more introduction to my @liberalcurrents.com piece, out today. This piece takes the mostly self-proclaimed motto of the Trump administration, FAFO, and asks who FAs and who FOs 1/

Read @acxn.bsky.social

I'm out in Liberal Currents today on how we shouldn't let the Trump tactical blunders distract us from his strategic blunders!

Proof that Iran is high up in the tech tree

I hate having to do the "look, they're normal just like us" post, but sometimes you have to do that when American propaganda tries to convince everyone Iranians are "animals".

Is there a reason to think that the state-level version of this wouldn't be the inverse? Not sure if it would close the overall gap or not.

UAE is calling this an opportunity for Trump to replicate their success in Yemen

I’d never really experienced it much before but holy shit now I know what people mean when they say the Russian Duma has a reformism problem

And of course there's no reason to expect that here. But just to emphasize that this is an ass-pull number

Like you can look at successful interventions to construct an optimistic scenario. Iran (US) in 1953, Iraq (UK) in 1941, even Afghanistan in 1979. These bought max ~20 years of "stability" (from the outside perspective) before the blowback became apparent. 50 years is fantasy land

when the programmer who worked on simcity actually implemented the city income calculation logic based on the design doc

was he doing maxis taxes praxis

Kill Chain On the automated bureaucratic machinery that killed 175 children

New, from me.

Donald J Trump the first president inspired by “How to Blow Up a Pipeline.”

You are a better writer than AI. (Yes, you.) YouTube video by josh (with parentheses)

Have you seen this? I feel like it's explicitly putting these two things together

youtu.be/V5wLQ-8eyQI?...